Danny

Album: Gardenview (2022)
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Songfacts®:

  • Nataly Dawn wrote this song about her great-grandmother whose real name was Jane but was known as Danny, short for "Dearest Granny." In a Songfacts interview with Dawn, she told the story:

    "She was this really brilliant woman. Some of my earliest memories were sitting on the floor next to her rocking chair and her telling riddles, reciting entire passages of the Bible. She has entire books of the Bible memorized by heart, and it was the same with poetry and riddles. She had so much stored in her brain. She was such a good storyteller.

    I wanted to write a song in memory of her. The chorus lyrics are a riddle because that's what she loved. It goes:

    You'd be surprised that the window
    Of opportunity
    Is never as wide or so narrow
    As you expect it to be


    I wrote it and was like, this doesn't mean anything, but the thing is, I think it's OK to write lyrics that you feel don't mean anything because oftentimes you're wrong and you'll figure it out later. I just let those lyrics be in there, and I thought the point of a riddle is really to just make you scratch your head and think about it.

    For me, the song is how the window of opportunity is small and very large. It's small in that these precious moments you have are happening right now and you have to pay attention to them and you have to see them. And the window of opportunity is also very large. You don't have to beat yourself up for missing an opportunity. You can let that go. You can be in the moment now, you can do it again. That's my interpretation of the lyric."
  • Nataly Dawn is half of the duo Pomplamoose along with her husband, Jack Conte. When she writes a song about a family member or other personal topic, she puts it out on a solo album; "Danny" appears on her 2022 album Gardenview.

    When Dawn made her first solo album, which was released in 2013, Conte produced it, but later that year he launched the crowdfunding service Patreon, which took up a lot of his time, requiring Dawn to work with other collaborators. Ross Garren and John Schroeder produced Gardenview with her and also played on the track, Schroeder on guitar and Garren on vibraphone, harmonica, and Wurlitzer.
  • The music video was directed by Dom Fera and uses a split-screen to show Nataly Dawn coming together with herself. "What I love about the video is that it pays homage to her love of riddles," Nataly Dawn said. "The visual stunts are so smart and playful."

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